New customers are always welcome in any business, and when you run a small business without a lot of resources, they are crucial to your success. As a matter of fact, there’s no way you can do business without customers. That would be termed something else, not a business.
So how do you get them? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer because what works for one company may have no effect on another. But there are some strategies that just about every small business should consider. This article will discuss six of them—don’t worry, we won’t overwhelm you at all.
Revamp Your Brand
This is a great strategy and one that you should definitely consider if your business has been around for years and maybe beginning to feel “stale.” It’s hard to admit, but not every product or service really needs to exist forever. Some businesses even do better by starting fresh with a new name and identity, so why not give it a try?
Doing so can draw attention to your company, and customers will be excited about the change. Plus, you’ll probably need fewer marketing dollars to get attention for your business because people already know it exists—they just don’t remember why they knew that in the first place.
Give Customers a Trial Period
This isn’t just a great strategy for businesses that have new products or services, but it can be used by any business. All you need to do is offer customers a free trial period with your product or service—anything from one week to a month should be about right.
Once they’ve seen firsthand how the product works, they’ll be more willing to pay for it. This can certainly be a win-win situation for both you and your customers.
Change Your Marketing Strategy
As we mentioned before, marketing doesn’t always have to revolve around one product or service—you can try several different things to see what works best and what doesn’t.
This is where good PR comes in, and you might want to hire a PR agency to help you out with this effort. Companies that can provide good content in terms of video coverage and pictures the way SVG does are what you should be on the lookout for. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money on this service—you can offer free samples or discounts to journalists and bloggers who write about your business, so they’ll write about you.
Find the Right Influencers
Influencer marketing can be an invaluable strategy if you do it right—so make sure you know your target audience well before trying to reach out to “influencers.”
This may be a little more work than simply advertising, but influencers can really help your business get the word out to the right people. Plus, you should only pay influencers who really endorse your products and services—if you find one that isn’t an authentic advocate for what you do, take your money elsewhere.
Read their blogs, watch their videos, sign up for their newsletters—do whatever you need to do to get a feel for the influencers in your field.
Once you know who you want on your team, all you need to do is send them samples of your product or service and ask if they’re interested in writing about it. This can be very cost-effective since you’ll only offer free products to influencers, not free services like other strategies.
Just Ask
Feel free to ask your customers for referrals—you can offer incentives if you’d like. It doesn’t have to be anything big, just a small discount on their next purchase from you, perhaps.
Image Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-doing-handshakes-3183197/
And this might seem too easy to be true, but sometimes customers just need a little nudge to recommend your business to someone they know. Of course, this isn’t the only way you can get referrals for your company—you should also try to become an affiliate or partner with other companies in your field so that you can offer each other’s products and services.
Cultivate People Skill
The people skills you have as a boss directly affect your employees and how they interact with customers. Customers want to feel welcomed, so it’s important that you hire customer service reps who are friendly and good at what they do.
And having a great relationship with your employees means the world in terms of their morale—just one bad day could ruin your whole business. So, just be a good person and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
If you’re looking for new customers, there are a number of different strategies and tactics that can help. We’ve gone over some of these ideas in this article.
